whoa, goldbars on the sidewalkWith Robin Williams advice, “Keep going that way ’till you smell money or you step in Chocolate“, we drove to Geneva with great expectations and we were not disappointed.

Often times we saw cars with a white sticker and ‘CH’ in black lettering. I knew it stood for Switzerland, but why CH? I found out it is because the official name of Switzerland is Confoederatio Helvetica, which is written in Latin, meaning Helvetic Confederation. The country uses Latin to avoid having to favor one of the four national languages. Talk about sticking to neutrality.

Switzerland is not yet apart of the EU, but maybe that will change in the near future. For now, you can pay with Euros and get change back in Swiss Francs. There are still border control posts on the Austrian/Swiss and French/Swiss borders but they aren’t really controlled on the EU side, however there is usually someone at the Swiss post and they seem to do random passport checks or help those who are lost. You can still see remants of military shelters. It didn’t help the nerves to know that the tunnels through the Alps might still be primed with demolition charges to be used against invading forces. Although I think they are officially clear of explosives, I hope.

Monument Brunswick in Alp GardenWhile in Geneva, I got a “I’m not worthy” sort of feeling. When we arrived in the city and drove along Lake Geneva we noticed street light banners that were not of some event that will occur in Geneva, rather advertisements for 20,000 Euro watches.

It’s a beautiful city, but my four hour impression of Geneva is that I don’t think I’d live here or even visit for vacation for any length of time. This is a place you go to because of a job or a week long international conference or you’ve got insane money to blow. Chocolate.. well okay, but there’s good chocolate other places too.

We heard English in all kinds of accents spoken on the streets, especially near the United Nations headquarters. We walked passed the U.S. American Embassy with an uneasy feeling. There were 3 armed soldiers, a fence and a thick wall covered with barbed wire surrounded the grounds -far different from the Italian Embassy, which looked like a nice old house converted into a hotel, even the gate was opened and we saw an SUV with german plates parked inside.

Jet d’Eau on Lake GenevaEverything is extremely expensive, from parking to a chic postcard. Food costs about 50% higher than in Munich, which isn’t cheap to begin with. If you want a McDreck Chicken Sandwich meal, you’ll have to fork over $9 or 7 Euro. Ouch!

However, the vistor center has some pretty handy maps, sectioning the city into different themes such as, dialogue and peace, urban planing and health, or architecture, which obvious stirs my curiosity to give Geneva further study. The most impressive sites for me were the Botanical Garden and the Jet d’Eau, one of the largest water fountains in the world. It is directly where Lake Geneva empties into the Rhone River. One of the most beautiful examples of hydraulics.

Here are some cool facts about the water fountain:

Five-hundred litres of water per second are jetted to an altitude of 140 meters (almost halfway up the empire state building, thx Donald ) by two groups of pumps, operating on 2,400-V electricity with a total power of 1,000 kW. The water leaves the nozzle at a speed of 200 km/h. When it is in operation, at any given moment there are about 2,000 litres of water in the air.

It would take approximately 5,500 years of continuous operation for the Jet d’Eau to pump out the volume of water contained in Lake Geneva.

Next destination: Gisela’s House just outside Ménerbes in the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.